I've been following Bitcoin for quite awhile now, and I've finally got around to wiring up my site to sell music using Bitcoin! If you've got a few billion dollars burning a hole in your pocket from the latest spikes, feel free to help support my music by sending some scraps my way. ;-)

The song shopping cart feature on my front page now has a checkout button to purchase the item with Bitcoin. It uses Coinbase, who is an awesome service that made it easy and quick to set up the cart, and even easier and quicker for you to make a purchase. I also have an old-school donate button and QR code on the bottom-left of the page.

Speaking of the shopping cart, I'm also including a 1.7 GB bonus pack for everyone who purchases the $40 buy-it-all package. It's got a ton of stuff of special use for video makers who need music - alternate cuts, unreleased jingles, instrumental replacements for vocals, etc. Enjoy!

You may have noticed some big changes on the website. Over the past couple months, I've been reorganizing and optimizing how the site works. In particular, I've made it a lot easier for the ever-growing number of videographers to sift through the huge number of songs. Check it out!

Song List

The catalog had grown too large to list every song on the front page, so it's now a filtered list. The left-hand side is the song list, the right-hand are the filters.

I've added a few topical playlists, including the default "Best Of" list for new people to get started.

You can now filter songs by genre, moods, age-appropriate content, themes, and tempo.

You can search for a song title, or lyric snippet.

The design is responsive, so as your browser window gets smaller, it adjusts the formatting.

Store

I killed the physical CD store. My CD sales have tailed off to where the pain of running to the post office wasn't worth the profit, while digital sales have grown a lot. If you really need a physical CD, drop me a line.

I replaced it with a new shopping cart feature on the front page. You can now buy songs for $1 (or $5 albums, or $40 for everything I have). They'll be delivered in a ZIP file, containing regular and instrumental versions, with both MP3 and lossless FLACs.

There are also buttons at the top of the main page to support me by Patreon or a PayPal donation, if you're feeling especially awesome.

I also simplified the main links to only have the parts I'm actively using. I brought back this blog to give you guys more in the way of long-form communication that can't be summed up in 140 characters.

This is an ongoing project, and I would love to get your feedback on it. What would you like to see, and how can I make this easier for you to use?

For those who don't know, my next CD is almost done, and I'm asking for your help to fund it through a Kickstarter campaign. The funding goal was met in two days​. That's.. well, wow.

I've known for a long time that my listeners are awesome. But I also look at this as a victory for Creative Commons, and for independent music as a whole. Ever since I started releasing music almost 10 years ago, it's been completely free for the world to download. I'm a geek in my other life, and I come from an open source, free software background, so applying the same philosophy to music was natural.

But free music isn't free to make or distribute. Aside from the instruments, microphones, preamps, speakers, acoustic treatment, video cameras, interfaces, recording software, plugins and CD manufacturing, my website is spitting out over a terabyte (!) of data a month. So without the generosity of my listeners, none of this would be practical. And yet, despite the fact that you're free to grab my catalog, and listen to / use it for no cost, so many of you step up to the plate to help out not just with this Kickstarter, but over the years in many other ways.

People don't want to steal music, as a whole. They want to support the artists they believe in. And more and more, those people understand that buying a major label CD at Walmart is not supporting the artist on the cover in any meaningful way. I get almost 100% of what you're contribute to my Kickstarter campaign - you're very directly making my music possible. We're right here living the future of music, and it's beautiful.

My fundraising goal is met, but the $1,500 goal was only the bare minimum to make the CDs. There's a ton of stuff I'd still love to be able to do. Not the least of which is to get a new preamp - my Portico is dead, so I've been having to use the crummy built-in preamps for my interface to record. I'd also love to get a real Wurlitzer electric piano and a bunch of other instruments. Everything that you contribute from here on in goes toward making the music you get sound better, and allows me to focus more of my time on music. So please, hop over to the Kickstarter campaign page and consider kicking in if you're able.

It's that time again, to throw a fresh coat of paint on a rusty old CD. :) This time it's time for "Dirty Wings" to have a turn. I went back and gave it a remix job to fix the little buggies that drove me mad. Nothing new was recorded, added or taken away. You can album tracks, or you can download a ZIP file of all of the tracks.

]]>2011-10-25T00:00:00-05:00Should I Post Demos?http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/demo_poll.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/demo_poll.html
So, as usual, releasing a new album means one thing to me: that it's time to start working on the next one.

I've traditionally posted demo versions of the songs I'm working on as I finish them. For "Ashes", I wrote and recorded the album in isolation, then released them all at once in their final form. That had one big advantage: I never felt overly attached to the rough mixes, because I took more time before I recorded them.

Another reason for not posting demos is that people download them (which is awesome), listen to them (also awesome), but might not know or choose to download the final versions when the CD comes out (not awesome). Every once in awhile, I'll see a YouTube video or something using a horrible rough demo of a song that's been out on CD for years, and I die a little inside. :)

On the other hand, I just went a year without really posting any new material, and that makes me a sad panda. There are a couple of other options. I used to have a "preview club" where I'd post the stuff. I could set it up so that only people who have purchased CDs/FLACs could download stuff - this would keep the casual listeners away from the rough stuff, encourage sales, and also to give me peace of mind that they'll probably "upgrade" to the full versions when the come out. Another option is to just post live acoustic versions of the songs to YouTube, as I did this last time with "Already There".

So what would you all like to see this time around?

]]>2010-12-02T00:00:00-05:00&quot;Ashes&quot;: What Song For a Single?http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/ashes_single.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/ashes_single.html
Fairly often I need to choose one or two songs to promote from the album for websites, radio, etc. For those of you who have heard "Ashes", which song would you pick that best represents it?
]]>2010-11-22T00:00:00-05:00NEW ALBUM: &quot;Ashes&quot; Now Available!http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/new_album_quotashesquot_now_available.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/new_album_quotashesquot_now_available.html

Admit it. You thought I was hibernating in a cave the past year, cranking out YouTube videos to maintain vague contact with the outside world, taking a break from the grueling process of releasing an album every year. You were only half right. I'm very happy to announce that my next CD, "Ashes" is now available!

You can download it (for free, of course) or buy a fancy shiny CD (name your own price) from my website here:

As always, I not only allow but encourage you to share this music with your friends, use it in your videos, and generally mangle it in any way you see fit. Thanks for all of your support over the past year - it's been an amazing ride, and I'm honored to have met so many of you great humans. Take care of yourselves, and I'd love it if you took a moment to let me know what you think of "Ashes"!

So I've decided this time around that I'm going to do another professional pressing, as I did with "Only Whispering". I'd rather have spent those millions of hours making music, rather than hunched over a paper cutter. Plus, this new CD is going to be really, really good. :) I'm trying to decide which route to go, and I want to know what you guys like.

It's between the old faithful clear plastic jewel cases and the newfangled Digipaks (those eco-friendly hard paper ones). I used to be a Digipak hater, since they didn't look the same as the rest of my CDs, but now (a) they're much more common, and (b) I don't really buy many physical CDs anymore. The Digis have the advantage of being smaller and lighter for shipping. On the minus side, it's the cork vs. screwcap argument, and they're a little more expensive (but the gap has narrowed, and with the lower shipping costs, it's probably a wash).

There are also those craaazy small wallet packages, where it's basically just a sleeve for the CD, but those seem like they'd be really unsatisfying.

This was done with the same philosophy as my other remix projects: nothing new is recorded, I only use what's there, and I keep the same feel of the originals.

I went into this process thinking it was going to be a breeze - I mostly liked the sound, there were just a few flubs and clicks I wanted to patch up. Those damn pops that creep up now and then were caused by a piece of crap Tascam interface I used for a couple months as I was finishing the original recording. Unfortunately, it turns out there wasn't much I could do with those - the underlying audio was pretty twisted, so it wasn't possible to gracefully remove the pops. So pretend you're listening to it on vinyl or something, I guess!

It turns out that most of the work to be done wasn't with pitch, because by this point in my musical career, I'd mostly figured out how to sing without sounding like a theremin next to a ceiling fan. The bigger challenge was timing, mostly caused by my foolish thinking that buying a drum set would instantly make me sound like Neil Peart. Luckily, Sonar's AudioSnap has come a long way, but it was still an incredibly tedious process on some of the songs (especially Deaf Dreamer and Goodbye to Spring).

The overall production was pretty good to start with, so I didn't mess with it much. I did pull back a little on the limiting on the mastering, and added a little ambience to some of the tracks that sounded dried out (especially Deaf Dreamer). I still had a little residual overbrightness on the mixes, but not as bad as the first two CDs. The bass bomb on the first two was already fixed. There were a few tracks that were frozen as 16 bit files, which overloaded and distorted them. I redid them as 24 bit and they sounded much nicer. The piano on Fit For a King was switched from the unrepairably noisy The Grand to the much cleaner Akoustik Piano. Many tracks were hissy from my crappy audio gear at the time, so I did my best to fix those up.

The other challenge wasn't a technical one so much as a logistical one - this was the first (and only) CD I've had professionally pressed. That means I have boxes and boxes of discs in pretty shrink wrapping up in my attic gathering dust, each CD with the original recording eternally pressed onto its shiny butt. I've decided that rather than trying to throw a new disc in the old cases, I'm going to keep selling the shrink-wrapped version (collector's edition, I guess?) and include a link to the FLAC download so you can burn your own updated version. But who's still listening to plastic discs these days, anyway? The FLAC link is updated if you already have it, or if you've already bought a CD, just drop me a line and I'll hook you up with the updated FLACs.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. I didn't think this would have a big effect on the overall quality, but I'm very pleasantly surprised what I was able to squeeze out of these songs.

]]>2010-08-02T00:00:00-05:00More Remixed Rejectshttp://www.joshwoodward.com/n/more_remixed_rejects.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/more_remixed_rejects.html
Awhile back, I started off remixing some of my ancient rejected songs to make them less sucky. I have the second installment of 2004-era songs finished:

I bent the rules with Zero to Phantom because the lead vocal track on my backup was completely messed up, but everything else on these used the same raw tracks, just remixed. The instrumental mixes are also now available, up on my music page. Enjoy!

I first heard the news of the Haitian earthquake when I woke up this morning. I grabbed my guitar and a song spilled out. Here's what I wrote. This is just a rough guy-and-guitar demo (as is the video), but you get the idea.

If you enjoy it, please take the time to make a donation to Doctors Without Borders. It'd mean a lot to me, and it'd mean way more to those in need.

Hey everyone! I'm going to try something different in 2010. Every week, I'll be releasing a video of some sort. There'll be some acoustic performances of album tracks, some interesting covers, some behind-the-scenes studio footage, and videos from live shows. I'm also going to share my new songs this way, instead of the usual demo MP3s.

For my first installment, I wanted to share a brand new song I'm working on writing, called "Already There". It's not quite done yet, but that's the fun part of this format.

I should take this chance to invite you to subscribe to my YouTube channel, which is the main place I'll be posting these. You'll also be able to get to them on my Facebook page, which I'd be thrilled if you'd take the time to fan that up as well.

Enjoy, and let me know if there's anything you'd like to see me do with this project!

Seems like there's definitely a lot of interest in a remixed Only Whispering, so I'll probably tackle that soon. In the meantime, I'm working on giving touchups to some of stuff in the reject bin. As much as I'd love most of those songs to die a humane and peaceful death, they're still getting a lot of downloads and use in projects. So I'm tacking them in batches.

The first batch of 2004-era stuff is now online and ready for download:

All of these will get instrumental mixes as well (one of the main reasons I wanted to do this). I'd say "enjoy", but that might be a little ambitious. How about: "may your ears no longer bleed" instead? :)

Thanks for all the great responses on the favorite album poll this week. It's really interesting to see the results. The winner of the moment seems to be "Only Whispering", which I never would have guessed!

That brings up another question for you guys. I wasn't planning on remixing that album, as I had done with Here Today and Crawford Street recently. The main reason is that I had that CD professionally pressed, and I still have hundreds of shrink-wrapped CDs up in my attic. But there have still been some quibbles that have annoyed me over the years, so I'm considering tackling it as a download-only remix - the MP3s free as always, and when you buy the old version on the CD, you get the new version on FLAC as well.

This one would be far less extensive than the last two - I'm mostly happy with the recording, I just want to fix a few bugs, make a few of the tracks a little less dry, and remove those super-annoying random clicks that my crappy old interface caused.

So what say you? Is this something you'd be interested in?

]]>2009-11-25T00:00:00-05:00Favorite Joshw Album?http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/favorite_joshw_album.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/favorite_joshw_album.htmlI'm just curious - for those of you who have heard all or most of my albums, which is your favorite? ]]>2009-11-22T00:00:00-05:00License Changehttp://www.joshwoodward.com/n/license_change.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/license_change.html

With the new CD, I've decided to drop the Share-Alike clause from my license. My music is now all available as Creative Commons Attribution. This means you can use my music for anything, as long as you give credit for it. [More Info]

I've been debating on this one for awhile. Obviously, I prefer that derivative works are also licensed as Creative Commons, but pretty much every day I'm waiving that provision for someone, so they can use it in a context that doesn't play well with CC (YouTube, movies, ads, etc). Now there's no ambiguity, and you can hack apart my music at will, as long as you give me credit.

This applies to "Breadcrumbs" and all of my other albums and songs, including the instrumental mixes. Enjoy!

I'm extremely happy to announce that my 8th CD, "Breadcrumbs" is now available for free download. It's been a year and a half in the making, which is an epic amount of time for me. I'm insanely happy with how it turned out, and I hope you'll enjoy it, too. :)

This CD was done a little differently than the ones before it. I used to go on songwriting binges, writing and recording songs in rapid fire spurts, then spending months touching them up for eventual release. I made a conscious decision this time around to focus on one song at a time, taking around a month to polish it and get it right. One of the odd side effects of this is that I didn't end up with any songs for the reject bin this time around. (Or, more to the point, things got dumped before the demos ended up in your ears)

You'll recognize the eight songs that were released as demos, and there are three more songs that haven't yet been heard. By a complete fluke, the final song order very closely reflects the order these were written in, with the three new songs right at the end. There are only 11 songs, but it's actually the longest CD I've released since "Crawford Street".

A number of the songs had invasive surgery since their demo versions. "Swansong" has a new first verse and chorus arrangement. "Private Hurricane" has new instrumentation, led by a Wurly now. "Grey Snow" slimmed down and went on a diet.

As always, without touring or major label support, I rely on you to get the word out! Please please please, if you enjoy what you hear, I'd love it if you'd take the time to send a copy to some of your friends, or to share it your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, shaved into the back of your head, anything. Thanks a million. :)

]]>2009-10-05T00:00:00-05:00It's Done!http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/its_done.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/its_done.htmlMy next CD is done! I need a little time to get the artwork set up, but the release date will be October 5th. There are 11 songs, including 3 brand new ones and several that have been massively overhauled since I released the demos. I think it's sounding pretty good. :) Stay tuned, I'll be launching a preorder soon.

Much like I did with "Here Today" last year, I'm happy to announce that my second CD, "Crawford Street", has been remixed. You can download the updated version from here, or grab the ZIP file of the whole album directly.

I stayed with the same rules as the "Here Today" remix: (1) use only what was there when I recorded it, and (2) keep the spirit of the arrangements intact. In other words, this is just a polish job, not an overhaul.

This was easier than "Here Today" in some ways, because everything was recorded in Sonar to start with, but it was harder in others because my first computer recording interface was terrible. The mic preamps in particular were terribly distorted and noisy. I used a ton of noise reduction techniques to clean up the tracks. Another complication was the introduction of real drums for this album - and a drummer (me) who had no idea how to play them. Let's just say I became good friends with AudioSnap during this process. :)

One notable exception here was the song "The Spirit World". I had saved the backup of the session incorrectly, and the original source tracks are long gone. I did, however, have an instrumental mix laying around. Turns out if you put the original mix on one track and the instrumental on another, line them up perfectly, then flip the polarity on one of them, you have an almost pristine vocal track that you can fix up. Splice that back on top of the instrumental track and you're good to go. It definitely would have sounded better if I'd been able to get the source tracks, but hey.

The most improved award goes to "Waiting Takes Time". I'd chosen a horrible patch for the bass synth, and switching it out made the low end so much tighter. That, and a bunch of other tweaks, and that song will rock your world now. As much as a CherT-Pain Kanye West parody can rock your world, at least.

I'll be going through old orders over the next week and emailing anyone who bought the CD in the past with a free link to download the updated FLAC files. It's not up yet if you have the old link.

This is probably the end of my remix trail. The next CD, "Only Whispering", has hundreds of shrink-wrapped copies sitting in my attic. So for that reason alone, I think that one's pretty much set in stone. ;-)

]]>2009-08-06T00:00:00-05:00New Album Updatehttp://www.joshwoodward.com/n/new_album_update.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/new_album_update.htmlWow, I've been slacking on updates here! Sorry about that. As usual, I had a burst of songwriting energy during the long, cold Ohio winter and then suddenly lost my desire to pen myself up in the studio when the sun came back out.

That said, I've got a few more songs in the pipeline that will (hopefully) finish up the next album. They're all very odd, but I think they'll do a good job of the hard task of pulling a bunch of random songs into a semi-coherent album. I probably won't release them until the album comes out, so that there'll at least be few new things to chew on. :)

I always hate to give estimates, but I'm looking at probably September, give or take a month. I'm pretty excited about this one, and I'm even more excited to get working on my next project, which will be a big departure from my previous work. More to come on that later. :)

In the meantime, I have another little project that I'll be unleashing over the next couple weeks. Stay tuned!

]]>2009-07-10T00:00:00-05:00The Stately Raven Bookstore in Findlayhttp://www.joshwoodward.com/n/the_stately_raven_bookstore_in_findlay.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/the_stately_raven_bookstore_in_findlay.htmlJust a quick plug for the local humans in Findlay. The Stately Raven Bookstore just opened across the street from the University, and it's wonderful. It's in a beautiful former church with a really good selection of new books and lots of comfy chairs. It's open from 10-9 every day, except Sunday (1-6). The only downside is that there's no coffee yet, but hopefully they will get that eventually. Way cool.

And speaking of Findlay brilliance, Revolver is featured in the most recent issue of Bon Appétit magazine (September 2007). Congrats, guys!

]]>2007-08-05T00:00:00-05:00Preorder My New CDs!http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/preorder_my_new_cds.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/preorder_my_new_cds.htmlMy next two CDs, "Dirty Wings" and "Not Quite Connected" are now available for preorder from my spiffy new online store! Order now and they'll be shipped out the day before the release (on the 10th).

How much do they cost, you ask? I'm leaving that up to you: you get to name your own price. Starting today, none of my CDs have fixed prices; you pay what you can. There's a fixed $3 shipping fee for any number of CDs, and a minimum price of $2 per CD. Those numbers are enough to cover my raw materials needed to make and send physical CDs (blank CDs, cases, paper, ink, envelopes, postage, etc). Anything more that you want to kick in is gravy.

The updated non-demo MP3s, tracklists and album art will be unveiled on the 11th. Whee, mystery! ;-)

Temporarily Out Of Stock - Sorry, these have been selling faster than I expected and I need to save some for the release party. I'm waiting on more ink to arrive so that I can make some more, so check back in a day or two!Back in stock!

]]>2007-08-02T00:00:00-05:00Site Running on New Serverhttp://www.joshwoodward.com/n/site_running_on_new_server.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/site_running_on_new_server.htmlI just moved the site to a new server. It should be pretty much transparent, and with any luck, the only thing you'll notice is a snappier response time. If you find anything that's hosed, drop me a line. Thankya! ]]>2007-08-02T00:00:00-05:00Album Titleshttp://www.joshwoodward.com/n/album_titles.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/album_titles.htmlJust wanted to drop a quick note to say that the CDs are officially finished, the first printing is done, and I have two big stacks of CDs sitting in front of me! The album titles will be... *drumroll* "Dirty Wings" and "Not Quite Connected".

Over the next day or two, I'll be releasing a new ordering system, and you'll be able to preorder the new CDs to have them shipped the day before the release. There's going to be a big change to the pricing system, and I think you'll dig it.

]]>2007-08-01T00:00:00-05:00MySpace Song Sharing Fixedhttp://www.joshwoodward.com/n/myspace_song_sharing_fixed.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/myspace_song_sharing_fixed.htmlApparently MySpace has stopped allowing the <script> tag for embedding content, which broke the code I was using to allow my songs to be embedded in profiles. I reworked this using an <embed> tag, so everything should be peachy-keen. You'll need to grab a new code if you were already using it. Click on a song on the music page, scroll down, and click the "Share This Song" link. ]]>2007-07-27T00:00:00-05:00Organizing Mixeshttp://www.joshwoodward.com/n/organizing_mixes.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/organizing_mixes.htmlWarning: Geeky producer content ahead...

I've struggled a lot over the years of keeping my master mixes organized. I figured I'd share my method for anyone who's in the same boat.

I always keep archives of every major mix version, using the filename convention of "Song Name - Version - Date.wav". For example, "She Dreams In Blue - 08 - 20070726.wav". I keep all of the songs I'm working on for the current album in one directory. Since it'd get crowded with all the old mixes, I create a subfolder called "Archived", and move old versions into this. In other words, the main folder has one file per song - only the most recent mix. Yeah, the version is kinda redundant, but it's helpful to give me context on how far a song is into development.

Just as I like to treat song mastering as part of the recording/mixing process, I like to start early with the album's song order. To do this, I use Winamp playlists. Just click and drag the songs into the order you want them, and save the playlist as a M3U file with a versioned filename, like "_Rock CD - 14 - 20070725.m3u". I give it an underscore as the first character to alphabetize it at the top, rather than in the middle of the songs. The neat part is that you can go to Nero, tell it you want to burn an audio CD, then drag the M3U file onto the window to burn the tracks in your playlist.

Sorry for the quietness around here. I've been hard at work finishing up the two CDs in time for the August 11th release date (a little over two weeks from now!). Just to show I haven't forgotten about you, here's a new and fun little tune:

This one was recorded entirely in the living room, instead of the studio.

The guitar part has a major highpass filter that sounds terrible on its own, but makes way for the sub-sonic piano part, which was recorded from a distance on a real piano. Since it has a broken middle C string, certain notes create a loud resonant buzz when you play them. If you listen in the intro, the part that sounds like a cymbal clap is actually this buzz. And the piano is tragically flat and out-of-tune, but I discovered that Antares AutoTune works magic for this. I shit you not.

The drums consist of drumsticks on the piano bench and pounding my fist into a wall for the bass drum.

I decided to give into the chorus of people demanding a proper CD release party. My next two CDs will be released on Saturday, August 11th at Coffee Amici. There will be special guests. There will be fireworks, marching bands, parades and Caligulian levels of hedonism. And there will be rock. It will be a grand time. :)

If you're like me, you can't afford to buy solid gold mic stands with gyroscopic balance circuitry, and you've had your fair share of valuable mics come crashing to the floor when you have the boom extended. Take out a $6 insurance policy: buy a 10 pound barbell weight and slip it onto the bottom of the mic stand:

Notice how it's at full height, the boom arm is fully extended, there's a heavy mic on it, and the arm is pointing out between two of the legs (the least stable position). It wasn't going anywhere. Neat.

]]>2007-06-21T00:00:00-05:00(Maybe) Playing Tomorrowhttp://www.joshwoodward.com/n/maybe_playing_tomorrow.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/maybe_playing_tomorrow.htmlKeep an eye on this site if you're planning to go to the Courtyard Concerts show tomorrow. If it rains - and it looks like it will at this point - the rock delivery mission will be aborted. I'll post an update here if I get word that it's cancelled.

Update, afterwards: Thanks to those of you who came out and braved the sprinkles to bask in the rock!

]]>2007-06-18T00:00:00-05:00June is Dairy Month!http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/june_is_dairy_month.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/june_is_dairy_month.htmlHow do you plan to celebrate? ]]>2007-06-11T00:00:00-05:00Revolver in Wall Street Journalhttp://www.joshwoodward.com/n/revolver_in_wall_street_journal.html
http://www.joshwoodward.com/n/revolver_in_wall_street_journal.html

Super-massive kudos to Findlay's finest restaurant, Revolver, for getting a rave review in the Wall Street Journal! I'm a foodie, and I do a lot of traveling, and I've yet to find another restaurant that's so reliably amazing. Congrats, guys!

I've been hearing buzz about the Recorderman method of recording drums, but it always seemed kinda strange, so I never tried it. I've really been missing out. Here's the basic idea:

Put one overhead mic directly above the snare, looking down, at a distance of two drumsticks.

Tape a piece of string where the beater hits the kick drum, run it to the mic, and down to the snare.

Pinch the string where it touches the mic, and move it behind your right shoulder. Set up another mic there, pointing at the snare. Check that the second mic is two drumsticks away as well (it should be).

This makes both mics perfectly equidistant from the bass and snare drums, aimed right at 'em. Here's the A/B comparison with a song I've been working on. It starts off with the Recorderman method, and then goes to the way I had it before, then back and forth.

It really has a beautifully clean sound. The best part is that the snare drum is so much more present, and in some songs, wouldn't even need a direct mic. I added a little bit of gated direct mic with heavy compression and a medium attack time, just to give it a nice "crack". The phase coherency is truly noticable, and the stereo image is much better. I'm totally sold (as soon as I stop giving "love taps" to the the shoulder mic). Thanks Des and Recorderman!

After lots of thought and headbutting against walls, I decided to put off the album release for 2-3 months. But the good news is that it's not going to be a CD release: it's going to be two CD releases at once! I've been working on two very different batches of songs over the past year, and I realized that I'm 80% ready to put out two very different CDs. I need to write a few more songs to fill some holes, and then I'll be ready to unleash the fury.